Bad week for Oxford Uni & RMC

Last week was not a good one for Oxford University or it's concrete supplier RMC.

For Oxford University, it started with the announcement of a day of action against their annual AGM last Saturday. Normally a day full of events, and with their Chancellor, EU Commissioner Chris Patten in town for the day, it turned out to be a damp squib. When activists turned up, they found that most things had been locked down by the University itself, who appeared to have had a severe bout of the paranoids.

Then, there was a 48 hour hunger strike by the 85 year old veteran animal rights campaigner Joan Court. Joan is protesting against the University's building of a new animal laboratory on South Parks Road, which is going to have a strong focus on primate research.

From 10am Wednesday morning to 10am on Friday, Joan remained outside the building site for her fast. She was kept company at all times and support was fantastic, with people coming down all during the day and night to bring supplies and support. Many were people who simply admired her for the stand she was taking and having the guts to go ahead with it. She certainly inspired far more than her supporters dreamed of.

Media attention was also overwhelming. For the first time the Oxford Mail covered the campaign, giving Joan attention for three days in a row, including a big picture on the front page one day. The rest of the local media were also fascinated, with extensive coverage on Passion and Fox FM, the lead story on BBC regional news and second story on Central TV's regional news at one stage.

All in all, it was an incredible bout of publicity that gained much support for the SPEAK campaign, and left the University looking silly. The best they could manage was a belated meally-mouthed statement about how animal research was important for medical advancement - not that the experiments planned for the new labs have much to do with developing medicine in the first place, being as they are to be mostly in the hands of the experimental psychologists. Scientists are ready and waiting to debate with Oxford University the value of their experiments should the University ever pull its head out of the sand.

The icing on this cake was the good news that an attempt to suppress people from leafleting colleges by having them arrested for burglary failed as the charges were dropped.

Meanwhile in the rest of the country there were tales that the supplier of concrete to construct the new Oxford labs, RMC (aka Ready Mix Concrete), had a bit of a problem with combustibles spontaneously igniting for the third time this year, this time down in Surrey. Oops. See the communique at  http://www.arkangelweb.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=703&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Every week for the last two months there have been demos outside the secondary headquarters of RMC in Rugby (RMC also own Rugby Cement) by activists protesting the involvement of RMC with Oxford University. Last week one of these protestors was arrested for the heinous crime of playing a drum. The police here are not as slow as their Thames Valley counterparts and only took four days to realize the charge would stick so had to be dropped.

Cheered by this the activists turned up for their weekly demo on Friday to continue hammering the message home to RMC. This time they were joined by a large group of school kids equally disgusted by the activities of the cement company. Despite the obvious intimidation techniques of the police, the pupils stayed their for their entire lunch break and giving us a very effective demo. See photo. The protestors have no intention of giving up the demos until RMC pull out, so will be back next week again. But if you cant make it and want to show your support, why not contact them at
RMC Rugby, RMC House, Evreux Way, Rugby, CV21 2DT; Tel: 01788 542111; Fax: 01788 540166.

So a very successful week for the campaign to stop the Oxford University Animal Labs. And the University cannot be looking forward to the next round of publicity this coming weekend as there is a National Demonstration to be held against the labs in Oxford itself - meet 12noon at Carfax Tower, as well as the weekly demo, 1pm-5pm at the labs on South Parks Road. If you cannot get along to either, why not check out www.speakcampaigns.org.uk

Me'thinks that being hacked by their own students is possibly the least of their problems.